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Tales
of A Sod House Baby

Settling the Western Great Plains
of America was a unique experiment by government. The Homestead Act of
1862 culminated in the attempt by Congress to persuade citizens to go
West in great numbers. Profit was their motive. Not since the Revolution
had land been “offered free” for the settling.

The area itself was
unique. Thousands of square miles of prairie grasses grew almost no
timber! Building materials were rocks and earth. In certain places, even
rocks were in short supply. This gave rise to the era of “dugouts” and
sod houses.

American ingenuity and
free enterprise were kindled to meet the challenge of settling the West.
The railroads offered special fares on “Emigrant cars” whereby whole
families would be transported to the “Promised Land” for $52. Most of
the merchants and tradesmen took the railroad offers.

Established farmers
wanted to take their own animals, seed and a few implements with them!
That signaled the era of the “prairie schooner” – a marvelous
wheeled contraption for transporting one's household over a sea of
waving grass that often appeared to be water.

From St. Louis
westward, the Santa Fe Trail became the highway for settlers – a
“highway” without bridges, without even the most primitive
accommodations and often without any established settlements along the
way.

Whole families joined
wagon trains for mutual support and safety. One such train carried an
entire “colony” of people from Zanesville, Ohio, to a point southwest of
Dodge City, Kansas.

Some of the more adventurous came with
only one or two, or perhaps up to four, wagons in the train, from points
near St. Louis, Missouri, and farther east.

The recollection of
these journeys, as seen through the eyes of the settlers’ children, is
told in Tales of A Sod House Baby by
one whose parents and grandparents made the trip. Some of the episodes
are firsthand accounts. Others are taken from the journal of a child who
left Lee County, Iowa, at age seven.

Authenticity is the
hallmark of the TALES. Everything from prairie storms to wildfires to
murders to confronting rattlesnakes and rabid dogs is covered in this
epic of the short-grass country of Western Kansas, 1879-1940.

A portion of the
proceeds from the sale of Tales of a
Sod House Baby supports this website and effort.
Order your copy (to be shipped anywhere in the United States) today,
plus several others to give as gifts! Simply mail a check in the amount
of $15 (includes shipping) for each book, to: Julie K. Smithson, 213
Thorn Locust Lane, London, OH 43140. Please provide your phone number
(and email address, if applicable) for courtesy notification when your
book(s) ship, and allow up to three weeks for checks to clear bank for
delivery of your book(s). Thank you for your order!

In order to protect your property rights, you must first
know the difference between the definitions of property, land, and
premises. If you do not know their meanings, you cannot effectively
protect your property rights, i.e., your freedom. Premises, a
recently touted definition, is being used to implement the
"National Animal Identification System," or "NAIS."
Substituting "premises" for "property" effectively
renders property rights null and void. This use of a term (and its
meaning, which is often not publicized) is no accident. Property is by
far the most powerful legal term, but you can lose your property rights
-- your ability to admit or deny access, utilize your property, sell or
mortgage it, etc., if you do not know the three meanings and the
context in which they are employed.

This is why property rights champions, researchers,
activists, etc., are so adamantly opposed to "NAIS" and any
other restrictions to their property rights.

Government agencies -- from various Department of
Interior branches (Bureau of Land Management, or BLM; National Park
Service, or NPS; U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, or USFWS / FWS /
"the Service," etc.) to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (FS), Animal Plant Health
Inspection Service (APHIS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and
others -- regularly refer to property as mere "land" and
property owners as mere "land owners." If left unchallenged
and uncorrected, this spells the extinction of property rights. Sleeping
on one's rights is no excuse in the legal and judicial worlds.

Property rights are vital to your freedom and
inseparable from it. Without them, you are nothing more than a tenant
paying taxes on property over which you have lost some, most, or all of
your rights.

Property - Something that is owned or possessed.
Property may be real (land), personal, tangible (touchable), or
intangible (such as the interest in a play or other creative work). -
U.S. Treasury OTS (Office of Thrift Supervision, in charge of banks,
savings and loan associations, etc.) http://www.ots.treas.gov/glossary/gloss-p.html

Premises - A physical location that represents a unique
and describable geographic entity where activity affecting the health
and/or traceability of animals may occur. In cases involving
non-contiguous properties, the producer/owner should consult with
his/her State Animal Health Official or Area Veterinarian in Charge to
determine whether there is a need for one or multiple premises numbers.
- National Animal Identification System (NAIS) A User Guide And
Additional Information Resources Draft Version November 2006 - Glossary http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/naislibrary/documents/guidelines/User_Guide.htm

"The three great rights are so bound together as to
be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but deny him his
liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To
give him his liberty, but take from him the property which is the fruit
and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave." - George
Sutherland, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1921.

NEVER FORGET
Kenton Joel Carnegie

Kenton in earlier days. Born February 11, 1983; killed
by wolves November 8, 2005

Ontario man killed in wolf
attack, coroner's jury finds -First
documented case in North America of a healthy wolf killing a human in the
wild

(Note: Please, everyone, send this one to many, many
others. Thanks to Barb Hall for sending me notice of this article
& decision. At last, Kenton Joel Carnegie's parents,
family and friends can rest and have closure, knowing that, despite the
most concerted efforts of the government of Saskatchewan, Canada, truth
won out.Reader, how would you feel
if Kenton had been your son, or brother, or friend? Would you
have fought for the truth? Would your heart have been broken by the almost
total blackout of news about what happened to Kenton, including the
interminable dragging out of the case by the coroner's office and federal
government authorities? Would you want the truth to be told as far and
wide as possible? However, the article's title still
contains false and misleading information in the latter half. Other people
have been attacked and killed by healthy wolves in North America "in
the wild" besides Kenton Joel Carnegie. Kenton
Joel Carnegie lived on earth from February 11, 1983 until November 8,
2005. His memory lives on in hearts and souls: forever.)

A coroner's jury in Saskatchewan has determined that
Ontario university student Kenton Carnegie was killed in a wolf attack.

Carnegie was 22 when he died in November 2005 near Points
North Landing, Sask. On a work term for a company at the mining
exploration camp, located about 750 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon,
Carnegie went for a walk and didn't come back.

Searchers later found his body surrounded by wolves.

Witnesses told the inquest that wild animals had been
feeding at an unregulated garbage dump. Concerns were expressed that
wolves in the area had lost their natural fear of humans.

Paul Paquet, an expert on
wolf biology who studied the case for the coroner's office, told the
inquest earlier in the week that it was more likely that a black bear
killed Carnegie, although a wolf attack was
also a possibility.

He said he based his findings on all the evidence,
including the way the body had been consumed and moved
around.

But his evidence didn't jibe with what people on the
scene observed. No one reported seeing a bear in the area.

Another wolf expert, Mark McNay, who had studied the case
for Carnegie's family, told the jury he was convinced it
was a wolf attack.

The jury's finding is significant, because there are no
documented cases in North America of a healthy wolf killing a human in the
wild.

The jury made a series of recommendations on how to
prevent similar incidents. Among them is a requirement for the
Saskatchewan Environment Department to provide proper fencing and
supervision at all landfills where there are known to be wildlife feeding.

(Note: NEVER FORGET Kenton Joel Carnegie,
born February 11, 1983; killed by wolves November 7, 2005,
the Scandinavian countries, Europe, all of the former Soviet Union, and
beyond. Kenton Joel Carnegie Memorial http://www.mtechservices.ca/Kenton/Kenton.html)

Kenton Carnegie had the highest score in solitaire at the Points North
Landing camp -- the last place the 22-year-old was seen alive.

Often in times of tragedy, the circumstances surrounding a
death become the main focus. People remember hearing about a man being allegedly
killed by wolves in northern Saskatchewan, but probably
don't remember his name.

The tears shed by his mother and father at the first of
five days of an inquest into Kenton's death are evidence that the pain of
losing their middle child is still fresh.

After the inquest adjourned Monday, Kim Carnegie, Kenton's
father, talked to the media. When he was asked to talk about who his son
was, Kim immediately started to get emotional.

"He was a remarkable kid. He was very, very
smart," said Kim, saying some people called him a genius.

"He was gifted."

Kenton was an honours student and had just won a $2,000
grant to put toward his studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.

That grant was the subject of many talks between Kenton
and a co-worker at Points North Landing at the time of his death.

"He was quite proud of the grant he was just
awarded," said Todd Svarckopf.

In the days leading up to Kenton's death, the weather had
been bad in northern Saskatchewan. Svarckopf and Kenton worked for a
geophysics company that did land surveying by plane. Svarckopf was the
pilot and Kenton would gather the data and put it in a report for the
clients.

When the weather was bad and the plane couldn't take
flight, the workers would spend time indoors, playing board games, playing
computer games or doing whatever they could to pass the time.

A few days before Kenton's death, the young student wanted
to go for a walk. Svarckopf told him that he had nearly been attacked by
wolves a few days prior and said it probably wasn't a good idea.

"I definitely didn't want to go for a walk after my
experience," said Svarckopf. "As a compromise, we played
hockey."

Then days later, Kenton said he was going for a walk and
that he'd be back by 5 p.m. When there was an empty chair at the dinner
table, Svarckopf and another co-worker went looking for Kenton.

They found his partially-eaten body about a half kilometre
from camp. RCMP were called, the corner was called and his parents were
called.

The flashlight held by the assistant manager of Points
North Landing was the one that first lit Kenton's body. Mark Eikel said
when he saw the tracks in the snow -- Kenton's covered by wolf tracks --
and then saw activity in the snow, he knew something was wrong.

"I didn't know what to do, so I left the scene,"
he said. That's when officials were notified, but Eikel went back to the
scene.

"It didn't seem right to leave him out there by
himself."

Kenton's body was recovered, taken to Prince Albert for an
autopsy and is now buried in Thornton Cemetery in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, where
he is from.

(Note: Every rural dweller, recreationist, vacationer,
farmer, miner, logger, rancher or rural homeowner, should read this
through from start to finish. It is that important. This occurred over the
Labor Day holiday. "Wolves work in
packs and not individually, and it was probably ostracized."
What about the "lone wolf" pabulum parroted by those using the
expired-but-annually-resuscitated "Endangered" Species Act to
loose a slew of large predators upon rural areas? If for some reason you
cannot view the two photos below, simply click on the website address for
each jpg to view. Fred Desjarlais would disagree about wolves' supposed
'shyness,' and so would Kenton Joel Carnegie -- if wolves had not killed
and partially eaten him. Before the reader shrugs these things off as
being 'not in my back yard' -- NIMBY -- please consider that this could
have happened to your friends, your family, or you, while on vacation or
living in some rural clime. Please recall the California and Colorado
cougar attacks that resulted in human fatalities. No one thought Texas
cougars would magically be transformed into "endangered Florida
panthers," merely by crossing a couple of state lines while being
shipped by government or private "re"introducers. The red
highlighting signifies use of Language
Deception. The very fact that United States media is
concertedly pretending this attack didn't happen, rather than splashing it
all over the print and television media, appears to indicate an
unwillingness to admit that such attacks are, indeed, becoming anything
but 'rare' and are soon to come 'south of the [Canadian] border.' How much
media coverage will there be when -- not if -- there is a human victim in
America? How long will it be before a Canadian gray wolf pack 'naturally
disperses' to 'The Wayne,' also known as the Wayne
National Forest of southern Ohio -- or to the Great Smoky Mountains of
Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee, or the Appalachians, Ozarks,
Adirondacks, or the Wasatch and Green River country, and beyond? How far
do you live from a national park or forest?)

Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada - A lone wolf that
attacked six people, including several young children, in a provincial
park over the long weekend has tested negative for rabies, the Algoma
Health Unit said yesterday.

The wolf, which has been blamed for several
separate attacks Monday at the popular Katherine's Cove beach on
Lake Superior was shot by park staff.

The wolf had a broken clavicle and tooth when it was shot
following the attacks, which may explain its
abnormal behaviour, said health unit inspector Bob
Frattini.

"Wolves work in packs
and not individually, and it was probably ostracized,"
Frattini said.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency plans to conduct
further testing on the wolf's body to try and find other possible causes
for the attacks, which left several families injured and badly shaken.

The attack on the Wright family occurred on Bathtub
Island, a large rocky area within wading distance of the mainland and
about 100 metres south of Katherine's Cove.

Brenda Wright, on a day trip with her sister-in-law, two
children and their cousins, aged 10 and 13, said her family was probably
attacked first. Park officials say they aren't sure about the order of the
attacks.

Her son, Casey, 12, noticed a black, doglike animal
running across the beach.

She said the animal nipped the ankle of her 13-year-old
nephew, Jake, then clamped down on her son's buttock, carrying him about
half a metre before dropping him and lunging at her.

The wolf's teeth tore into her hands and her leg as she
fought back and the group raced into the shallow swimming area. Wright
said the wolf followed them, this time going after Emily Travaglini-Wright,
14.

"(Emily) was a real fighter. . . She got mostly claws
in her head and her arm," her mother said.

Emily Travaglini-Wright, 14, of Sault Ste. Marie, displays
wounds she suffered while fighting off a wolf that attacked her and four
other family members at Katherine's Cove beach in Lake Superior Provincial
Park.

Leah Morgan from Marathon, Ontario, was attacked by a wolf
at Katherine's Cove, Lake Superior Provincial Park. She was with her
grandparents who rescued her from the wolf as it tried to drag her away.

Alerted by the screams, two strangers raced over
and managed to scare off the wolf. As families hid in the trees, the wolf
returned minutes later and rifled through their picnic stashes.

For Jerry and Rachel Talbot, it started at around 4 p.m.
The Wawa, Ontario, couple, on their way to a wedding in Sudbury, with
granddaughters Leah, 3, and Madison, 5, pulled off Highway 17 for a quick
swim at a popular picnic area in Lake Superior Provincial Park.

According to park staff, more than a dozen others were
enjoying the end of the Labour Day weekend at Katherine's Cove when the
Talbot family wandered onto the beach and began to remove their shoes.

Jerry Talbot noticed a black animal chasing a girl across
the sand. Too slow for the girl, the animal veered off and grabbed a
slower, smaller target: Leah.

It clamped its jaws around the blond toddler's left upper
arm and began dragging her away from her grandmother and sister.

The girl was dragged about six metres before the wolf
dropped her on her back, startled by the shrieks of her grandparents and
those who had jumped in to help.

Leah started to run, but she was in sand and she was in
shock.

The wolf grabbed the hood of the little girl's black
jacket. This time, Rachel Talbot's advances and screams caused the wolf to
drop the girl momentarily and she lunged forward, scooped up the child and
raced to her vehicle. Jerry Talbot and Madison were close behind.

The International Wolf
Center is one of the premier sources of information on wolves.
What follows are excerpts from wolf [FAQ - Frequently Asked
Questions] found at:

* There are three species of wolves in the world: the gray
wolf (Canis lupus), the red wolf (Canis rufus) and the Ethiopian (or
Abyssinian) wolf, (Canis simensis). Some researchers believe the Ethiopian
wolf is not a wolf, but actually a jackal.

* The gray wolf, Canis lupus, lives in the northern
latitudes around the world.

* There are five subspecies of the gray wolf in North
America and seven to 12 in Eurasia.

* Wolves usually live in packs which consist of the adult
parents, referred to as the alpha pair, and their offspring of perhaps the
last 2 or 3 years. * Pack size is highly variable because of birth of
pups, dispersal, and mortality. Generally, a gray wolf pack has from six
to eight wolves, but in Alaska and northwestern Canada some packs have
over 30 members.

* Territory size is highly variable. Gray wolf territories
in Minnesota range from about 25 to 150 square miles, while territories in
Alaska and Canada can range from about 300 to 1,000 square miles.

* Wolves breed at slightly different times, depending on
where they live. For example, gray wolves in the Great Lakes Region breed
in February to March, while gray wolves in the Arctic may breed slightly
later in March to April.

* The gestation period of gray and red wolves is usually
around 63 days.

* The average length (tip of nose to tip of tail) of an
adult female gray wolf is 4.5 to 6 feet; adult males average 5 to 6.5
feet. The average height (at the shoulder) of a gray wolf is 26 to 32
inches.

* The massive molars and powerful jaws of a wolf are used
to crush the bones of its prey. The biting capacity of a wolf is 1,500
pounds of pressure per square inch. The strength of a wolf's jaws makes it
possible to bite through a moose femur in six to eight bites. In
comparison, a German shepherd has a biting pressure of 750 pounds per
square inch. A human has a much lower biting pressure of 300 pounds per
square inch.

Wolf
attacks beachgoersNews24, South Africa -13
hours ago
Montreal - A black wolf sowed terror at a popular Canadian
beach, attacking six people -- including four children -- before it was
shot dead, an official with the Canadian province of Ontario
said on Thursday. The victims at first believed the animal was a large
black dog when it appeared in broad daylight on Monday and then attacked
beachgoers along the shores of Lake Superior, Melanie Dufresne,
spokesperson for the ministry of natural resources, told AFP. The
victims were bitten in the arm, hands, ankles and head and were
hospitalised but have since been released, she said. It took
several terrifying minutes before the animal was finally chased from the
beach.The incident occurred in a provincial park, only
a few hundred metres from a main cross-country highway, where
the animal was shot several hours later. The wolf, which weighed
33kg, did not have rabies and appeared to be healthy,
said Brent Patterson, a wolf specialist at the ministry. The
animal was most likely two to three years old and "was not starving,"
Patterson said. Wolf attacks on humans are considered extremely rare, he
said. "There's never been any proven
fatality in the wild in North America."

September 2,
2000, after the Darby Farmland Rally held near London, Ohio.

Selected Quotes

Truth is violated by falsehood, but it
is outaged by silence. - Henri Frederic Amiel

"It is the sacred principles
enshrined in the United Nations charter to which the American
people will henceforth pledge their allegiance." -
President George Herbert Walker Bush addressing the General
Assembly of the U.N., February 1, 1992.

"In March 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the
steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary
organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper
world and employed them to select the most influential
newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them
to control generally the policy of the daily press....They
found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of
the greatest papers. An agreement was reached; the policy of
the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor
was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit
information regarding the questions of preparedness,
militarism, financial policies, and other things of national
and international nature considered vital to the interests of
the purchasers." - U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway
(R-TX), 1917

"To achieve One World Government it is necessary
to remove from the minds of men their individualism, their
loyalty to family traditions and national
identification." - Brock Chisholm, while director of UN
World Health Organization.

"Not only does the Charter Organization (United
Nations) not prevent future wars, but it makes it
practically certain that we shall have future wars,
and as to such wars it takes from us (the United States) the power to declare them,
to
choose the side on which we shall fight, to determine what
forces and military equipment we shall use in war, and to
control and command our sons who do the fighting." - J.
Ruben Clark, Jr., former Under-Secretary of State and
Ambassador to Mexico, who was widely recognized as one of
our nation's foremost international lawyers, stated on page
27 of the book entitled "The United Nations
Today."

"Freedom is worth the price. There
is no conflict between liberty and safety. We will have both, or
neither." - Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General

"If we don't stand our ground, now,
on whose ground will we stand in the future?" -
Joanne Cline, July 19, 2002

Referring to Helen and Wayne Hage:
"They have both lit the light of freedom in the hearts of
many." - Tom Collins, Nevada Assemblyman, November
18, 2002

"When we make critical habitat
designations, we just designate everything as critical, without
an analysis of how much habitat an evolutionary significant unit
[ESU] needs." - Donna Darm, the acting NMFS
(National Marine Fisheries Service) Regional Administrator for
the Northwest, in a 1998 intra-agency memorandum.

"Either you have a right to own
property, or you are property." - E. Wayne
Hage, March 1992

"It
is probably a healthy exercise, when considering the
extinction of species in this age, to remember that many
thousands of life forms have ceased to exist from wholly
natural causes -- dinosaurs spring invariably to
mind.And further
that some organisms -- especially primitive
forms, which, as it were, are 'past their prime' --
will pass into oblivion, both without human assistance and in
spite of it." - from The Birdwatcher's
Companion, page 229, authored by Christopher Leahy of
the Massachusetts Audubon Society, 1982

"As a teenager, I used to
wonder if Johnny Tremaine, Nathan Hale and John Paul Jones
knew what exciting times they grew up in. I suspected they
were oblivious to their place in history and wished I could
have been there to partake in the creation of a new nation,
founded in liberty & justice for all. And now
I look around, and I see I have the very same opportunity I
yearned for so long (ago)." - Rich Martin,
June 15, 2003

"Freedom is a fragile thing and is
never more than one generation away from extinction. It is
not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and
defended constantly by each generation, for it
comes only once to a people. Those who have known
freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again."
- President Ronald Reagan

"And now, first and foremost, you
can never afford to forget for a moment what is the object
of our forest policy. That object is not to preserve
forests because they beautiful, though that is good in
itself; nor because they are refuges for the wild creatures
of the wilderness, though that, too, is good in itself; but the
primary object of our forest policy, as of the land policy
of the United States, is the making of prosperous homes.
It is part of the traditional policy of home making in our
country. Every other consideration comes as secondary.
You yourselves have got to keep this practical object before
your minds: to remember that a forest which
contributes nothing to the wealth, progress, or safety of
the country is of no interest to the Government, and should
be of little interest to the forester. Your
attention must be directed to the preservation of
forests, not as an end in itself, but as the means of
preserving and increasing the prosperity of the
nation." - President Teddy Roosevelt, speaking
to the Society of American Foresters in 1903. (emphasis
added)

"And when the God-created and guided Republic
writhes, broken and bloodied, and its grief-stricken eyes cast
about for help, who will be there? The minutemen from days of
yore, minute in number, as before." - Julie Kay
Smithson, March 13, 2004

Interdependent
Transformations: "NOTHING that is happening in this transformation of
our culture, and, therefore, our form of government, stands alone ...
is in isolation. It is ALL integrated, interconnected, interdependent
such that one part cannot function without all the others. Depicted as
a drawing, it looks like a massive spider web. Education is not
separate from gun control, growth management, land use planning,
environmentalism, heritage rivers, land grabs, property rights, salmon
recovery, and the plethora of other "issues" people across this nation
are fighting their government over. All of these issues are serving the
same purpose: to TRANSFORM our nation from a republican form of
government -- wherein the government serves the people -- to
a socialist/communist form of government where the people serve the
government, aligning them with all other nations of the world to blur
borders in a global economy that is, in actuality, a one-world
government. Once you understand systems theory, the whole of this comes
together and people understand ... People who don't understand systems
theory tend to cut off the morning glory blooms to watch them grow
right back." - Lynn M. Stuter

"The three great rights are so bound together
as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but deny him
his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth
living. To give him his liberty, but take from him the property
which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a
slave." - George Sutherland, Associate Justice of the United
States Supreme Court, 1921.

There are a
thousand hacking at the branches of evil, to one who is
striking at the root. - Henry David Thoreau

"Few men have virtue to withstand the
highest bidder." - President George Washington

"The establishment of an American Soviet
government will involve the confiscation of large landed
estates in town and country, and also, the whole body of
forests, mineral deposits, lakes, rivers and so on." -
William Z. Foster, National Chairman of the Communist Party
USA, 1932

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